Schenectady, New Brunswick, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St.
Louis. By 1835 all the larger centers of industry were familiar
with the idea, and most of them with the practice, of the trades
organizations of a community uniting for action.

The local unions were not unmindful of the need for wider action,
either through a national union of all the organizations of a
single trade, or through a union of all the different trades'
unions. Both courses of action were attempted. In 1834 the
National Trades' Union came into being and from that date held
annual national conventions of all the trades until the panic of
1837 obliterated the movement. When the first convention was
called, it was estimated that there were some 26,250 members of
trades' unions then in the United States. Of these 11,500 were in
New York and its vicinity, 6000 in Philadelphia, 4000 in Boston,
and 3500 in Baltimore. Meanwhile a movement was under way to
federate the unions of a single trade. In 1835 the cordwainers
attending the National Trades Union' formed a preliminary
organization and called a national cordwainers' convention. This
met in New York in March, 1836, and included forty-five delegates
from New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut. In the fall
of 1836 the comb-makers, the carpenters, the hand-loom weavers,
and the printers likewise organized separate national unions or
alliances, and several other trades made tentative efforts by
correspondence to organize themselves in the same manner.

Before the dire year of 1837, there are, then, to be found the
beginnings of most of the elements of modern labor organizations
--benevolent societies and militant orders; political activities
and trades activities; amalgamations of local societies of the